East Rochester/Gananda coach Dennis Greco explains that it is also a place with a lot of love, and Greco loves the game. He's been pacing the sidelines for more than two decades, talking strategy and explaining to high school-aged student-athletes why the coaching staff trusts them to carry out the plan.

“It's his attitude and passion for the game, there’s never a day where he doesn’t want to be on the field,” ER/Gananda senior quarterback Patrick Shanley said.

After 25 seasons, Greco still has the fire. At 63, he still loves winning, and undefeated ER/Gananda has three wins already this season heading into its homecoming game 7 p.m. Saturday against Palmyra-Macedon.

But Greco has a plan. He's already told the Bombers. Whatever wins they come away with this season will be the last on his overall record. He's calling it a career.

"It’s going to be tough,'' said Greco. "I’ll miss working with the staff, the guys have been together a long time. At the same time, it’s a year-round job, it never ends and there are things that sort of wear on you. I'll miss the Friday nights (Saturday games), the staff and working with the kids."

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East Rochester/Gananda varsity football coach Dennis Greco during practice at East Rochester High School Friday, Aug. 25, 2017. (Photo: SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)

His coaching career in football reaches back a total of 40 years, so Dennis and Sue Greco, his wife of 38 years, aren't sure yet, about how they will spend time or even how they will feel during future fall weekends. It has been a largely uninterrupted routine. Even a heart attack in January 2000, in which Greco underwent quintuple bypass surgery, did not deter him from being back on the sidelines that fall.

Saturday's Homecoming also is alumni night, and at least 30 former players plus some former members of Greco's coaching staff are expected to return to East Rochester for the festivities and to enjoy one last walk down the sidelines with Greco.

"For me? I think, a lot of tears," Sue Greco said. "I hope we get a really good turnout, I know he’s really excited.”

Past Bombers and their accomplishments as a team will be announced during halftime. There is a plan to acknowledge Greco's accomplishments as the coach of those teams, too. The best part of the celebration comes after the game, during a reception.

That is when the gathering resembles the team dinners the Greco's invited all of those players to, during two-and-a-half decades as the team's coach. There were also a few "Pie Nights" around the team's final game of the season, when players and coaches were invited to come over and eat the chocolate-, apple-, ice cream- and coconut-flavored treats made by Sue and parents of players.

“East Rochester, it’s a very what-can-I-do-to-help kind of community,'' Sue Greco said. "We’ve seen that Gananda is the same kind of place. It's small enough where people know each other."

Love seems to accumulate.

Dennis Greco loved football before he arrived in East Rochester. He grew up in Newark, where he and a group of his relatives worked in the family-owned Newark Grill restaurant. The Cleveland Browns fan began playing football as a freshman in high school.

He loved it so much he coached youth teams and , a season as the school's 23-year-old modified football coach before becoming an assistant on the staff led by Section V Football Hall of Famer Len Colavito, 12 years in all at Newark.

Greco spent three seasons as an assistant coach at Saint John Fisher College before becoming the coach at East Rochester.

But when the Bombers were on the path of disappearing nearly 15 years ago because of shrinking team rosters, Greco became one of the bridges for former youth players in Gananda to the ER teams. He had a connection to Gananda, having taught social studies for 30 years in the Gananda school district and also served as an administrator.

Maybe a merged team, a willingness to bring students from different schools together, not only kept football going at East Rochester, but set the stage for the team to thrive.

"The game has evolved, so has he, and we win,” JV coach and 2006 East Rochester graduate Jordan Koch said.

The Bombers have won 145 of 223 games with Greco as coach, a winning percentage of 65 percent. The 2012 ER/Gananda team won the Section V Class B crown, and the Bombers have made a total of eight appearances in a sectional tournament final.

“It seems like changing his philosophy definitely helped us to win,’’ fourth-year varsity member Shanley said. “He was able to adapt to the players he had and what his (assistant) coaches wanted to do. Coach Greco has never been about himself, what he wants to do."

Make no doubt, though, Greco's influence could be seen in his teams. During the mid-1990s, Greco and an assistant coach shook their heads in disbelief about how a high school quarterback could throw the ball like East Rochester's Mark Hermann and not be selected to the Democrat and Chronicle All-Greater Rochester Football Team. The Bombers back then, passed the ball more than most teams in Section V.

Last season? Cameron Cleveland ran for 1,959 yards with 30 touchdowns in 10 games. The year before Cleveland had 2,095 rushing yards with 26 touchdowns.

"Now he's realizing we have to change based on what the defense is doing,” Shanley said about the team's multiple formation, power-offense.

While Greco has "always been intrigued about throwing the football" — the Bombers used to run the spread offense — ER/Gananda also has turned to run-orientated power-option, I-formation and I-option formations through the years.

“We would coach together in the fall, and then (during the indoor professional football season) I was playing for him,'' Koch said. "It put me back in the pads, learning from him. I learn something from him everyday.

“He also picks my brain, and that shows the trust he has in his staff. I may be a younger guy, but he picks my brain and he’s learning stuff from the younger guys."

More than one person who knows Greco said that the coach has updated his cellphone only in the last year or two. It's a fact that Greco still uses a pencil and calculator to compile the team's statistics, but usually is the first on the staff to recommend using the latest equipment at team practices.

"He’s very disciplined. When the doctor told him (after heart surgery) this is what you have to do, what you need to eat, that's what he did," Sue Greco said. "When you look at how things were done (in high school football) and what they do now, things have changed a lot.

"There’s no hitting in practice anymore. We have kids on the team with long hair. Twenty-five years ago. that wouldn’t have gone over so big. Technology, he’s grown a lot. The basic philosophy, hard work and teamwork, that’s who he is. He’s old-fashioned in the sense that his values are the most important things to him, but he''s a players' coach. He's not a wins-and-losses coach.”

Greco is also not a coach who plans to walk away from football completely. You can't just walk away from something you love. So, maybe he will get involved in helping run the Finger Lakes high school league or join the Section V Football committee when the Bombers finish playing this season.

Greco certainly will find another way to help the Bombers.

“Throughout the years, his door has always been open to me, even after I graduated and when I wasn’t coaching,” Koch said. “It's interesting because he was my coach, but we’ve become so close.

"He (jokingly) doesn’t like my clothes and I (jokingly) don't like his, but it’s all love, and that’s what this whole program is all about."